because the variation of the distance between us and the stars is so infinitesimal in amount, compared with their enormous distance, that for us they are always little; but with terrestrial objects, this is not the case. On climbing the slope of a lofty mountain, our fellowcreatures, seen on the plain below, soon show "scarce so big as beetles," then as mites, and finally become invisible animalcules. We restore to them a portion of their original size, and render them visible, by drawing them nearer to us with the telescope. Thus the telescope is the microscope of large distant things, while the microscope is the telescope of small things in too close approximation for their parts to be perceptible by our limited organs. It shows and proves that between their parts there are intervals which would otherwise escape our observation and cognisance; that what we think to be contiguous and continuous, is really separate and broken up into parts. The telescope extends our range of vision outwards, the microscope enables it to plunge deeper inwards.

The intervals between the ultimate particles of bodies will probably ever remain beyond our ken and measurement, visible only to the

eye of the mind. Some philosophers have held that the distances which separate the atoms constituting solid bodies, are as great, relatively to their actual size, as those from one fixed star to another. That the atoms of which everything gas, liquid, or solid — is made up are not contiguous, and do not absolutely touch each other, is proved by their expansion and contraction under heat and cold. A favoured hypothesis maintains that those atoms revolve round each other, like the heavenly bodies, and that their revolutions are made perceptible to us by the sensations of warmth or chilliness, as the case may be.

Dr. Tyndall, to explain the heating of a lump of lead by the blows of a sledge-hammer, says, "The motion of the mass, as a whole, is transformed into a motion of the molecules of the mass. This motion of heat, however, though intense, is executed within limits too minute, and the moving particles are too small, to be visible. Here the imagination must help us. In the case of solid bodies, while the force of cohesion still holds the molecules together, you must conceive a power of vibration, with certain limits, to be possessed by the molecules. You must suppose them oscillating to and fro; and the greater the amount of heat we impart to the body, or the greater the amount of mechanical action which we invest in it by percussion, compression, or friction, the more rapid will be the molecular vibration, and the wider the amplitude of the atomic oscillations." Now, if the vibration describes a long ellipse, like the dance of a gnat in the air, it becomes precisely the orbit of a revolving comet which remains in attendance on its sun, instead of wandering from system to system.

If this be true-and Dr. Tyndall adds, "the molecules have been thought by some, notably

by Sir Humphry Davy, to revolve round each other, and the communication of heat, by augmenting their centrifugal force, is supposed to push them more widely asunder;"-if this be true, there is a complete analogy between the smallest and the greatest of created things. An iron-filing, a drop of oil, a bubble of air, are galaxies of atoms, obeying the laws of their mutual attractions and repulsions; while the stars we call fixed, are only the atoms composing some great whole whose form and contour are beyond the scope of our vision. And thus, whether we look outwardly, to reach the infinitely great, or inwardly, to penetrate the infinitely small, the prospect that meets us is alike, differing only in magnitude. And we may repeat that both in its mechanical and its material constitution, the universe is one-a unity.

THE WRECK OFF CALAIS.
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 4, 1866.
THE waves broke over the harbour light,
The women ran, screaming, along the pier,
The wind like a wild beast howled; the night
Grew darker as, with a shudder of fear,
We saw just then, by the flash and flare
A hissing rocket a moment cast,
A tossing wreck swept almost bare,
Aye! the cruel end it was coming fast!
A few more blows from the breaking sea,
A few more surges of angry wave,
And a floating spar and a plank would be
All that was left. Was there none to save?
None to struggle with surf and tide,

And the foaming hell of the angry flood,
That raved and raged with a devilish pride,
Howling, as 'twere, for human blood?

"Twas a little brig of St. Nazaire,

That wrestled with Satan at sea that night; And the steady lighthouse flame fell there

On the women's faces, wan and white; The children sobbed, and the mothers wept, Hearing the sailors' screaming cries, As the torchlight fell on the waves that leapt, And gleamed on the staring and sorrowing eyes.

And then we could see the savage rush

Of the wolfish waves as they bore along, And swept o'er the wreck with a ravening crush. Then the moon shone out from the gloom by gone, And up in the rigging dark there showed,

Bound to the ropes, five half-drowned men. And one poor boy, who a spar bestrode

Till a breaker bore him into its den.

No brave man's heart could bear that cry,
As below, on the moonlit level sands,
The women knelt in their agony,

And wrung their tight-clasped pallid hands.
The moon was full, but its tranquil light

Lent only a terror to the snow,
And a horror and fear to the rolling surge,
And the restless mighty seethe and flow.

Then we English fellows, with cheer and shout,
Ran eagerly down to the further sand,
And dragged the life-boat quickly out

Not one of us lads but bore a hand.
'Twas bedded deep in the silt and snow,
And the drift was round it high and fast;
But we dragged it steadily, though slow,
Till the deeper water was reached at last.

But just as we launched a sour-faced man Came tow'rds us, biting his lips, and bade The noisy Frenchmen, who after him ran,

Pull out at once.'
e." Well, they were afraid;
Still they tumbled in in their bragging way,
Shouting their gibberish loud enough,
But half way came a wave at play,

And the lubbers were not of a right good stuff.

So they turned, and left the men to drown;
Then we went mad at that, and raced
For the boat at the other end of the town;

And we ferried across, but the fools, disgraced,

Would not bring the key, and were sullen and glum.
So we tore down the rails, which did quite as well,
And launched the boat, and were cool and dumb,
Till we pulled away for that foaming hell.
How loud they cheered from the pier and sands
As we shot like a sea bird to the wreck;
Our hearts were good, but how weak our hands;
Waves do not yield to a coxswain's beck.
A cruel sea struck our staggering boat,
A moment, and half of us had gone,
And I and some others, on oars afloat,

Saw the careless wave roll roaring on.
But English are English, come what may ;
And life to them is a paltry thing
Compared with duty; so quickly they

Pushed off while we were still struggling; And rescuing all that were left, again

They pulled through the racing rolling tide, And saved the last Frenchman, whose worn weak brain

Had turned when his friends had slowly died.

And the Sunday morning, when all was calm,
Our steam-boat left with the five dead men,
And half way across we sang a psalm

Beside the row of coffins, and then
The captain read us a chapter or two,
Till presently up the white cliffs came;
But not for them, the brave and true,
Who put the Calais men to shame.

NEW UNCOMMERCIAL SAMPLES. BY CHARLES DICKENS.

A PLEA FOR TOTAL ABSTINENCE.

ONE day this last Whitsuntide, at precisely eleven o'clock in the forenoon, there suddenly rode into the field of view commanded by the windows of my lodging, an equestrian phenomenon. It was a fellowcreature on horseback, dressed in the absurdest manner. The fellow-creature wore high boots, some other (and much larger) fellow-creature's breeches, of a slack-baked doughy colour and a baggy form, a blue shirt whereof the skirt or tail was puffily tucked into the waistband of the said breeches, no coat, a red shoulder - belt, and a demi-semi- military scarlet hat with a feathered ornament in front, which to the uninstructed human vision had the appearance of a moulting shuttlecock. I laid down the newspaper with which I had been occupied, and surveyed the fellowman in question, with astonishment. Whether he had been sitting to any painter as a frontispiece for a new edition of

Sartor Resartus; whether "the husk or shell of him," as the esteemed Herr Teufelsdroch might put it, were founded on a jockey, on a circus, on General Garibaldi, on cheap porcelain, on a toy-shop, on Guy Fawkes, on Wax-Work, on Gold Digging, on Bedlam, or on all, were doubts that greatly exercised my mind. Meanwhile my fellow-man stumbled and slided, excessively against his will, on the slippery stones of my Covent Garden street, and elicited shrieks from several sympathetic females, by convulsively restraining himself from pitching over his horse's head. In the very crisis of these evolutions, and indeed at the trying moment when his charger's tail was in a tobacconist's shop, and his head anywhere about town, this cavalier was joined by two similar portents, who, likewise stumbling and sliding, caused him to stumble and slide the more distressingly. At length this Gilpinian triumvirate effected a halt, and, looking northward, waved their three right hands as commanding unseen troops to Up guards and at 'em. Hereupon a brazen band burst forth, which caused them to be instantly bolted with to some remote spot of earth in the direction of the Surrey Hills.

Judging from these appearances that a procession was under way, I threw up my window, and, craning out, had the satisfaction of beholding it advancing along the street. It was a Tee-Total procession, as I learnt from its banners, and was long enough to consume twenty minutes in passing. There were a great number of children in it, some of them so very young in their mothers' arms as to be in the act of practically exemplifying their abstinence from fermented liquors, and attachment to an unintoxicating drink, while the procession defiled. The display was, on the whole, pleasant to see, as any goodhumoured holiday assemblage of clean, cheerful, and well-conducted people should be. It was bright with ribbons, tinsel, and shoulder-belts, and abounded in flowers, as if those latter trophies had come up in profusion under much watering. The day being breezy, the insubordination of the large banners was very reprehensible. Each of these, being borne aloft on two poles and stayed with some half dozen lines, was carried, as polite books in the last century used to be written, by “various hands," and the anxiety expressed in the upturned faces of those officers-something between the anxiety attendant on the balancing art, and that inseparable from the

pastime of kite flying, with a touch of the angler's quality in landing his scaly preymuch impressed me. Suddenly, too, a banner would shiver in the wind, and go about in the most inconvenient manner. This always happened oftenest with such gorgeous standards as those representing a gentleman in black, corpulent with tea and water, in the laudable act of summarily reforming a family feeble and pinched with beer. The gentleman in black distended by wind would then conduct himself with the most unbecoming levity, while the beery family, growing beerier, would frantically try to tear themselves away from his ministration. Some of the inscriptions accompanying the banners were of a highly determined character, as "We never, never, will give up the temperance cause:" with similar sound resolutions, rather suggestive to the profane mind of Mrs. Micawber's "I never will desert Mr. Micawber," and of Mr. Micawber's retort, "Really, my dear, I am not aware that you were ever required by any human being to do anything of the sort."

At intervals a gloom would fall on the passing members of the procession, for which I was at first unable to account. But this I discovered, after a little observation, to be occasioned by the coming-on of the Executioners-the terrible official Beings who were to make the speeches bye-and-bye-who were distributed in open carriages at various points of the cavalcade. A dark cloud and a sensation of dampness, as from many wet blankets, invariably preceded the rolling on of the dreadful cars containing these Headsmen, and I noticed that the wretched people who closely followed them, and who were in a manner forced to contemplate their folded arms, complacent countenances, and threatening lips, were more overshadowed by the cloud and damp than those in front. Indeed, I perceived in some of these so moody an implacability towards the magnates of the scaffold, and so plain a desire to tear them limb from limb, that I would respectfully suggest to the managers the expediency of conveying the Executioners to the scene of their dismal labours by unfrequented ways, and in closely tilted caris, next Whitsuntide.

The Procession was composed of a series of smaller processions which had come together, each from its own metropolitan district. An infusion of Allegory became perceptible when patriotic Peckham advanced. So I judged, from the circumstance of Peck

ham's unfurling a silken banner that fanned Heaven and Earth with the words "The Peckham Life Boat." No Boat being in attendance, though Life, in the likeness of "a gallant, gallant, crew" in nautical uniform followed the flag, I was led to meditate on the fact that Peckham is described by Geographers as an inland settlement with no larger or nearer shore-line than the towing-path of the Surrey Canal, on which stormy station I had been given to understand no Life Boat exists. Thus I deduced an allegorical meaning, and came to the conclusion that if patriotic Peckham picked a peck of pickled poetry, this was the peck of pickled poetry which patriotic Peckham picked.

I have observed that the aggregate Procession was on the whole pleasant to see. I made use of that qualified expression with a direct meaning which I will now explain. It involves the title of this paper, and a little fair trying of Tee-Totalism by its own tests.

There were many people on foot, and many people in vehicles of various kinds. The former were pleasant to see, and the latter were not pleasant to see: for the reason that I never, on any occasion or under any circumstances, have beheld heavier overloading of horses than in this public show. Unless the imposition of a great van laden with from ten to twenty people on a single horse be a moderate tasking of the poor creature, then the Temperate use of horses was immoderate and cruel. From the smallest and lightest horse to the largest and heaviest, there were many instances in which the beast of burden was so shamefully overladen, that the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals has frequently interposed in less gross cases.

Now, I have always held that there may be, and that there unquestionably is, such a thing as Use without Abuse, and that therefore the Total Abolitionists are irrational and wrong-headed. But the Procession completely converted me. For, so large a number of the people using draughthorses in it were clearly unable to Use them without Abusing them, that I perceived Total Abstinence from Horseflesh to be the only remedy of which the case admitted. As it is all one to Tee-Totallers whether you take half a pint of beer or half a gallon, so it was all one here whether the beast of burden were a pony or a cart-horse. Indeed, my case had the special strength that the half-pint quadruped underwent as much suffering as the half-gallon quadru